Daymare
by Crystal Silvera
Summary: Dreams can never be fully drowned out, and nightmares even more so. But what, really, does that matter to the most beautiful creature ever to walk the earth? At what point does the nightmare step over dawn and into day? And as your heart cries on, and on, and on . . . The sea calls, the forest pulls, and the stars sing of your past—and future. One-shot!


**A/N: Sorry, guys: This was one of those things where I just ****_had_**** to get it written. (To those of you who follow my writing and are wondering what the heck I'm doing here / with this, well, keep reading. :P)  
**

**I recently dug up one of my childhood favorite movies**—_**The Last **_**_Unicorn_****. I dug it up because I viewed an online list of "Best Fantasy/Sci-fi Books" and Peter S. Beagle's novel (under the same title and also what the movie was based off of) was on it. The title piqued my interest and I decided to rewatch the movie. I did rewatch it and kind of fell in love with the movie all over again, for different reasons than the first time. **

**When you're a kid, y'know, only those visual things stick: I remembered very clearly the scene with the skull screaming its head off****, the Red Bull's defeat, and Mommy Fortuna**—**oh, and Schmendrick and Molly . . . but, weirdly enough, not Amalthea or King Haggard. (Or, for that matter, the _harpy_!) When you're older, the things that stick change. And I'm not going to name those because, depending on who you ask, you'll always get a different answer.**

**Proceeding the rewatch, I raced to my local library's online catalog and found the book. I read it and, well, it's every bit just as amazing as the movie. :D (Or maybe even _more_ so . . .)**

**Anyway. Let's see where this takes us. . . . **

**_Magic, do as you will!_**

* * *

**_Daymare_**

* * *

The first and the last.

If it makes any sense, she was really the last before she was the first.

* * *

There's a story I hear often, passed around the ring huddled before a fire or whispered to an eager cluster at your feet. It was a story about a girl and a forest, and of magic and the night sea.

If it's any help—which it probably won't be—I am quite nearly everywhere. But never did I find myself in one place for so long. . . .

* * *

The story told of a young girl who, as many girls in fairy-tales are, had a cruel stepmother and a hard-working but poor father. She was actually an orphan, but earned her keep by tending to the fields and the meadows behind the house. And, of course, caring for the horses that lived there as well.

Beyond the fields and meadows lay a forest. She would often linger at the edge of it, gazing into its shadow-lit depths, wondering what creatures walked the sun-dappled earth. If she could, she would stand there for ever, staring and staring, searching for something that wasn't always there.

But one day, it was.

She had the horses with her that day—just leading two of them for a stroll, a pearly gray mare and her pitch-black foal. A pleasure walk that nailed two birds with one stone: She could exercise the horses, as she had to anyway, and catch a glimpse of the mysterious place her heart so longed for.

And there—a flash.

She thought her eyes had deceived her. That it was merely a very bright reflection of light off some unseen pool, or perhaps a lost mirror or glass shard. _A trick of the sun,_ she thought to herself, starting to turn away but not quite managing it. Her eyes were fixed—

Then another.

Only it wasn't simply a flash this time: It held still. Shock-white, almost glowing against its backdrop of shadowy forest.

She felt herself freeze.

And then the other appeared.

The mare she held pulled against the lead, blowing from her nostrils in alarm. Her foal shrilled and the girl heard the thud of its hooves as it bucked once.

* * *

Here the storyteller would pause, and all eyes would be slightly wide and all breaths almost held. The land around them would always be silent and waiting, always knowing what had emerged from the forest, always knowing that without the creatures the land would be dying—no, dead.

* * *

"Unicorns," the girl whispered.

And unicorns they were indeed: A mother and her foal, both shimmering ghosts, delicate in the forest. Watching her.

The horses the girl still held pawed the air and whinnied, fear and awe laced through their cries. The girl, yanked out of her reverie, turned away from the unicorns and soothed them, singing a song under her breath.

Unseen, the unicorns' ears pricked at the notes. The gray mare eyed them warily, her foal shied away.

The girl sang.

* * *

In every story, no matter which variation, the girl would eventually have to leave the mystical creatures. In every story, the tale ended in heartbreak, and the girl would continue life blindly roaming the forest or stumbling deaf through empty years spent in the town—always, always calling for her unicorns to come back. To prove they were more than dreams and mirages cast from the forest's depths—which they never did. The creatures would become living nightmares for the girl, pitied by the rest of the town, and they would mourn her, lost to her daymares.

Every story, except one.

One teller ended it differently, every time. One teller created a beginning from an ending.

* * *

The two unicorns did disappear that day, but they came back in her sleep through the realm of dreams, when the moon was high and its light splashed through her window and lit her face. She saw the stars first, then the endless roiling sea, and in the sea's deep she saw the unicorns emerging, dancing on the foam and shining ocean-white through the waves.

_The last,_ they whispered. _We are no more. Become one of us, become the last . . . Hope is lost to the world . . . _

_What do I have to do? _she cried, her eyes filling at the anguish in their voices.

_Jump, _they answered. _Join us, then touch the stars . . . Escape to the sky, where no bull will ever reach you . . ._

And so she plunged into that heaving sea, and reached a hand upwards to the diamond-scattered sky. Rising. . . .

She awoke to find herself in her beloved forest, in a body that Death would never touch. Her mind had changed, and so had her soul—she felt it.

The more she dwelt upon the thought, the more she become convinced that her previous life as a girl had merely been a dream.

_A dream,_ she told herself, standing. She gazed at the rolling green hills, at the willows that bent towards the pool, at the flowers that sang with color. A forest that had always been . . . and always will be. _A dream, a nightmare. Nothing more_—_I wasn't ever anything before I was a unicorn._

And the last unicorn glided to the water.

* * *

That is no longer the case, of course.

* * *

She did return—eventually. She came slowly, hesitant, at twilight, and only after long wanderings through the towns; after a fruitless search for something her heart so longed for.

No. Not a search. She knew where it lay, the thing she was looking for. And she knew it would be impossible to call her own.

_Unicorns do not regret. Unicorns can only sorrow. Unicorns do not regret, _she kept telling herself, insistent. But her heart would argue, and the memories would rush back as living daymares, and she would moan and shrill and strike the air. _But I do. I_ do_ regret, and remember, and, and . . . Part of me is human. Human forever.  
_

I was solidly placed in her heart by then. Not to the point of taking over, but she knew I was there and knew she could do nothing to be rid of me.

I looked on, as I have since creation.

_I regret, I regret, I regret,_ her heart sang, my voice a whisper twined in its cry, fueling its voice. I looked on as she brought eternal spring back to her forest, as she stood by the pool and looked not into it, but gazed at a vacant place across the water, where someone had once stood with her.

_I am the first to feel regret. Unicorns do not regret . . . But I _do_. _

She closed her eyes and sank to the grass, still trying to see what was no longer there.

* * *

Over time, she forgot that as well. Unicorns are forever, but daymares, however strong, are doomed to fade. And when it did, she would remember nothing of the humans and the Bull. The world was simply her, her forest, her animals, and when the thought struck her on occasion, the other unicorns.

Sometimes the dreams would come back and attack her, and she would freeze, remembering and remembering and crying without tears. She would scream. The birds would fall silent and the forest's eyes blinked out of sight. She would be alone, alone with a lost past. She would feel me gnawing at her heart.

When the night came, I would be gone and she would go on, keeping her forest green until the end of forever. Slowly, I would visit less and less, until I was no more than a fleeting wisp, too quick to be caught every time I came. But whenever I _would_ get caught, she would freeze, her eyes shadowed in defeat, her mane and tail limp around her in failing comfort—human, for half a moment. And in the next heartbeat, I would be gone.

Even so: It was the first time I had been in the heart of a unicorn.

* * *

**A/N: Well, that was interestingly not what I meant it to be originally . . . But that's okay. Occupational hazard, yes?  
**

**Also, a tiny thing I noticed: The story about the girl was partially spun off of a series I read when I was younger, The Unicorn's Secret series/quartet by Kathleen Duey. T.T (Oh, dear . . . me and unicorns.) Anywho, there _are_ some things I changed: The girl isn't named Heart, the younger unicorn is perfectly normal [by unicorn standards], and so forth.  
**

**(Caught while editing: I can't seem to break out of crossover habit . . . The narrator sounds [rather] creepily like the narrator from Markus Zusak's _The Book Thief_! . . . _Gah._)**

**Reviews would be amaz-derful-tastic!**


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